


myosotis (forget-me-not)

by foolondahill17



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:28:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21526762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foolondahill17/pseuds/foolondahill17
Summary: Dean and Lisa: the ending and the beginning. Two scenes, thirteen years apart.
Relationships: Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21





	myosotis (forget-me-not)

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for mild sexual content and language.

_2011_

Lisa wakes up to a shrill phone ring, chattering voices, and the chalky scent of antiseptic, and her brain registers _hospital_ before she can think _what happened._

Her eyes drift to Ben, sitting at her bedside, looking too mature for his almost-thirteen-year-old. 

“Hey, Mom,” he smiles, like it’s the easiest thing in the world, but Lisa’s stomach clenches because her son isn’t supposed to be there, waiting for his mother to wake up in a hospital bed. 

She reaches backward into her mind to try to place what happened, but where there should be answers is just a yawning, echoing chamber of nothing. 

“Hey,” she says, trying to match her son’s smile. She can’t help the confusion and concern from leaking out of her lips: “What –”

But Ben has the answers ready, even though he’s _twelve_ and he shouldn’t have to have the answers: “You’re in the hospital. We were in a car crash.”

Lisa leans forward, wants to pull Ben to her chest like he was baby again. “Are you okay?”

But his smile is still too easy when he reassures her, even though their roles are supposed to be reversed right now, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, I’m fine. You hit your head pretty bad, but you’re okay now.” 

Hit her head. Lisa lets herself fall back against her pillows. Maybe that explains the alarming expanse of emptiness she feels inside her brain, the strange blankness where there should be noise and confusing images: sirens, the feel of the wheel under her hands, at least some recollection of a collision. 

A knock on the glass partition draws Lisa’s eyes to the open space between her room and the nurse’s corridor. There’s a stranger standing there, close-cropped hair, tall. He looks concerned, uncertain, like maybe he’s afraid Lisa will tell him he can’t come in, or maybe he’s afraid she won’t recognize him. 

What?

She _doesn’t_ recognize him. She doesn’t think she’s supposed to.

“Hi,” the stranger takes a nervous step toward her bed, seems to reconsider, and rocks back on his heel. He’s breathing hard, one hand in his pocket, another dangling limply by his side like he’s not sure if he’s supposed to wave. 

Ben’s eyebrows furrow with suspicion. “Who are you?” An accusation, almost, but not quite. Guarded. Protective. Mostly Lisa’s son is confused, and Lisa knows that her son’s confusion should set her at ease – Ben, too, doesn’t know this stranger – but instead it just makes the twisted sense of _wrongness_ in Lisa’s gut draw tighter. 

The man’s eyes flit to Ben. He stares at him with his mouth slightly open, takes a deep breath and finally answers, “I’m Dean.” 

Again, the flicker of recognition. Gone in the blink of the eye it took Lisa to register it was there. A miniscule _something_ on the tip of her tongue, like déjà vu, like a childhood daydream. 

The man hesitates again, but then his words rush out of his mouth like he can’t stop, “Ah, I’m the guy who hit you.”

And it all falls into place. Except it doesn’t. _He’s lying,_ Lisa thinks automatically, with the same knee jerk reaction she had when she first recognized _hospital_. 

What?

Why would he be lying? 

She can feel Ben’s eyes on her, so she forces her body to react the way it should, wondering if the drugs they have her on are causing these feelings: the fuzziness and unplaceable sense of unease deep inside her chest. 

It’s the car crash, she tells herself. She feels this way because of the car crash. The head trauma. The shock of waking up in a hospital with no memory whatsoever of how she got there. It’s natural for her to feel displaced. 

“Oh,” she says stupidly, because there’s nothing else she can say. 

“I just, ah,” the stranger is looking at the floor now, like maybe he can’t bear to look into either her or her son’s eyes. 

And there’s a flash of anger now, rising in her stomach. _It’s his fault,_ she thinks, _his fault that Ben was in danger._ And she’s thinking about the car crash. She has to be thinking about the car crash. There’s nothing else she could be thinking about. 

“I lost control for a minute,” he says it with a wince of genuine pain. Lisa’s anger fizzles into a pulsing knot of sympathy that feels disproportionate to the fact that this man is a _stranger._

But she’s always been a sucker for a pretty face and a sad backstory. 

Maybe it was his fault, Lisa allows, but that doesn’t matter. Because he’s sorry. He’s sorry, and he tried so hard –

What?

The man takes another deep breath, voice choked with emotion even though Lisa can tell he’s trying hard to swallow it down so she and Ben won’t see. “And I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.” 

His jaw works painfully around his words, “I’m real happy you two are both okay.” He says it with a swift smile, one that doesn’t reach his eyes – eyes that are piercingly, familiarly green (how could she ever forget eyes like that? What?) somber and older than his young face should allow. 

The man’s eyes dart from Lisa in the bed to Ben in the chair. She gets the strange feeling that he’s memorizing their faces. “And, ah, I’m just glad your life can get back to normal now.” 

Again, the weak smile. Lisa forces herself to smile in return, even though it feels like ripping something out of her chest. She looks at Ben. She doesn’t want to look at this stranger anymore.

She takes Ben’s hand in her own, rubs her thumb over the back of his wrist. “We’re okay, so…” she fishes for the end of that sentence, turns back to look at the stranger. “So that’s what’s important. Right?” 

She waits for his answer, realizes she’s waiting for him to disagree with her, tell her that there’s something else more important here, something that Lisa isn’t getting, but should. 

The stranger tries to smile again, but this time can’t quite make it. “Yeah,” he breathes. “Anyway, ah –” His eyes are bloodshot, Lisa notices. It’s sweet of him to cry for them, and she’s not sure why that fact thuds against her heart as strongly as it does. The meds are making her overly emotional maybe. 

The man tries again, eyebrows crunching his forehead, “I’ll leave you two alone.” 

More silence. And Lisa doesn’t know what to say. There’s an ache deep inside her that’s tempting her to ask the man to come closer, take a seat, not to worry, not to worry because it’s not greeting card perfect but – 

What?

“You take care of your mom,” the man says, like it’s an afterthought, pointing a shaking finger at Ben, but it isn’t an afterthought. Somehow Lisa knows that this is what the man had wanted to say all along, the most significant thing he’s leaving them with. 

Ben nods, turns to look at Lisa, but Lisa follows the stranger with her eyes as he dips behind the partition, and she listens to his footsteps fade into the cacophony of other hospital sounds: clicking keyboards, beeping heart monitors, rolling gurneys. Suddenly she’s sure that he’d told them his name, but she can’t recall what it was, and she doesn’t know why, for a heart-stopping moment, remembering matters so much. 

But then the something on the tip of her tongue slips away, and she looks at Ben, staring at her steadily with his too-old eyes and ready smile, and the stranger’s right: that’s the only thing that’s important. 

OOO

 _1998_

It’s a damn cool car, the big black Chevy that rolls into the bar’s parking lot with a monster’s roar and a broken headlight. Lisa tracks the progress of the driver through the bar’s front window. She’s got a table all to herself, but it’s still early, and she’s still browsing. 

The bell above the door jingles as the man pushes inside. He’s got a leather jacket slung over one shoulder, wearing a ratty flannel and a black t-shirt underneath. He’s got muddy combat boots and slight, intriguing limp. 

His eyes (green. beautiful.) flow from the counter that lines the far wall to the small collection of half-empty tables in the corner. He finds her sitting alone like he was looking for her, and she turns her head in the split second before they make eye-contact. She’s not gonna make it too easy for him. 

Instead, he wanders to the bar, orders a beer and a shot of whisky with a wrap of his knuckles on the counter, looks over his shoulder like he can feel Lisa’s eyes on the back of his head, and this time she awards his glance with raised eyebrows. He shoots her a grin that makes something clench in her stomach. She crosses her legs, makes sure he gets an eyeful of her long, slender limbs before she turns her head and looks back out the window. 

Lisa Braeden is nineteen-years-old and she has a type: a hard-liquor, looking for a fight, able to charm the pants off anyone with a vagina kinda type. And, fuck, this man is her type. 

“Wanna drink?” a male voice says overhead, and Lisa turns, but her smile drops before it fully forms on her face, because it isn’t the driver with the damn cool car, it’s just another cowboy with a week’s pay and a boner. Gray hair in his whiskers and probably about as old as her dad. Good for nothing douche. 

“No thanks,” she lifts her eyebrows at him. 

“You waitin’ for someone?” the man doesn’t get the hint. “Looks like you could use the company.” 

“I said no thanks,” Lisa says, firmer this time, because she doesn’t want any hangers-on, not tonight, not when there’s a much more interesting specimen waiting for her across the bar.

A glint of anger flickers in the cowboy’s eye, and for a fraction of a second, Lisa worries she’s just gotten herself into trouble, wonders if flashing her legs across the bar attracted the wrong target. 

“You bothering this lady?” A husky voice interrupts them. The driver appears behind the cowboy and taps the man’s shoulder. The cowboy turns, and for a minute Lisa’s afraid – and slightly thrilled – that the glint of anger in the cowboy’s eyes is going to hit flames, but the man blinks and lifts his hands to shoulder height, backing up a step. 

“Naw,” the cowboy says gruffly. “The lady says she’s not interested.” 

The driver nods a _that’s right_ but there’s a knowing look in his eye that says _she’s not interested in_ you, _pal._

The cowboy walks away. Lisa’s new friend drops into the chair across from her without an invitation, swinging a leg over the seat with easy grace, but he can’t hide the slight wince that crosses his face as something twinges in his hurt leg. 

“What’ you do to it?” Lisa asks. 

The man hits her with another smirk. Goddamn his lips are full. They look soft. His jaw is sandpapered with whiskers. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” 

He’s holding two bottles by the neck and he slides one to her across the table. Lisa takes a swig, swallows, fixes his green eyes with her brown and says, “Try me.” 

He cocks an eyebrow, says it like it’s a promise, “Maybe later.” 

“I haven’t seen you around before,” Lisa says after another drink of beer that he mirrors from the other side of the table. 

“Just passing through,” he answers. “You?”

“I live here, nothing too exciting. I work at the local coffee house and teach yoga at the Y.”

“Yoga, huh?” His eyebrows shoot up until they’re almost hidden by the spiky ends of his mussed bangs, plastered to his forehead with what must be dried sweat. She wonders what he’s been up to, what he did that was so much of a workout. “That’d be neat to see.” 

“Maybe later,” she returns with a grin, and she’s got him nearly licking his lips. 

It doesn’t take many drinks before he suggests a hotel, he’s just rolling through, hadn’t planned on spending the night, but he’ll make an exception, and Lisa says she’s got a place nearby. She’s glad neither of them is too drunk. She likes it better when she’s not shit-faced. She likes to remember things in the morning, otherwise what’s the point; she’s not just any whore looking for a mindless fuck. Whatever Pam might say. 

They’re already glued by the mouth by the time’s she’s fishing for her keys in her purse. One of his hands slips under her shirt, fingers slide under the wire of her bra, and his fingernails brush the underside of her breast as the door opens behind her, and she stumbles backward. 

He catches her with a strong hand on the base of her back, right above the belt of her shorts, and walks her into the apartment, kicking the door shut with the heel of his boot without coming up for air. And Goddamn if that isn’t hot as fuck. 

The backs of her legs hit the end of her bed. His fingers slide under her belt. 

There’s no point in turning on the lights. She’s not thrilled at the thought of him seeing the scattered clothes and dirty plates that cover every available surface of her one-room apartment, anyway.  
In the next minute they’re pulling at each other’s clothes. He kicks off his heavy boots at the base of the bed and climbs on top of her. 

He is a bundle of contradictions in bed: 

There’s a keen, urgent energy to his movements: well-practiced, deliberate, something that reminds her of a tiger stalking its prey. There is something undeniably dangerous in his rippling muscles and his scent of hard living, whiskey, and something smoky (ozone?). He is young, she can tell. In fact, she wouldn’t be surprised if he was carrying a fake, same as her, but he’s also somehow unbearably old. So fucking tired of this shit. She knows the feeling. 

But he’s gentle, too, not like the usual dickwads who see her as just another fleshlight who happens to breathe. At times he seems lost in his preoccupation to please her. Despite his obvious experience, there’s something almost innocent in the way he draws her on top of him, something unbearably sweet in the pucker of his Cupid’s bow, his pupils blown-wide with endorphins, eyes searching and wanting and grappling at her face, the half-gasps of pleasure that choke in his throat and make Lisa tingle all over. 

He is kind. 

Lisa’s screwed enough men to know. 

Sometime before dawn bleeds through her blinds, they fall still, all sweaty limbs and twisted sheets, breathing hard. One of his arms is pinned under her, wrapped over her shoulder. Her head is on his chest and she listens to his heartbeat peter out to a resting rhythm. 

“So what’s your story?” she murmurs, not sure if he’s the sort who likes postcoital pillow talk, but she figures he can always pretend to be asleep if he’s not interested. 

“Haven’t got a story,” he answers. 

“Everyone’s got a story,” she whispers back. She’s always liked clichés. They’re simple. Easy to play off with a smile. 

She can see him better now that milky gray light is started to leak through the windows. She can see the strange pockmarks and gleaming stretches of skin that spot his chest. Scars, she realizes. She traces a track near his shoulder. It looks almost like claw marks, but she can’t imagine where he’d gotten them from. “Got a family and a home town?” 

“I’ve got a brother and a dad,” he gives up reluctantly. 

“Your mom?” Lisa prompts. 

“Dead,” he says shortly. 

“Sorry,” she says. She stops the words from dropping off her tongue _my mom has cancer_ because she doesn’t want to introduce that into this space, where truth and fear don’t have a place, and she can’t possible connect a dead mom to a mom with cancer because, she tells herself, those have to be different things. 

Instead she says, “My dad walked out on us when I was fourteen.” 

“Sounds like a dick,” he says. “Family shouldn’t –” He stops. 

And there it is: the thrill in her stomach. Because something about his pain, his vulnerability, pulls deep inside her. And Lisa feels bad about it; she really does. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with her, what makes her able to get off on wounded men, but there is something so achingly addicting, something gooey and warm and tantalizing about his hurt. 

“Family shouldn’t leave,” he finishes. He clenches his jaw, stares at the ceiling. Lisa desperately wants to ask him _who left you?_ But she knows better than to prod him, knows that a wrong word can have him out her door before she can count to ten. 

Instead, she spiders her fingers up his shoulder, finds each dip in his skin that is another scar from a life she cannot begin to understand or venture to ask about. Is he a veteran? She’s slept with a couple soldiers before. They have the same closed-lip, haunted look to their faces. 

“You close with your brother?” she asks softly. 

She watches his Adam’s apple bobble. There’s a trace of a smile on his lips, but also a crease of something like pain between his eyebrows: gone so quickly she might have imagined it. 

“Sammy is…” he fiddles with the words in his mouth. And Lisa gets it. Oh boy, does she get complicated sibling relationships. 

“He older or younger?” 

“Younger. He’s sixteen.” 

“I’ve got an older sister. Pamela,” she offers. “She’s a bitch.” 

Her words startle a smile across his lips. “So’s Sammy.” But then, just like that, the smile disappears. 

Her stomach thuds with enticing sympathy. She aches for him. Yearns. It’s like a power trip: getting men to come apart under her fingers. 

She tells herself without believing it that she’s helping them. Giving them someone to talk to. Giving them someone who cares (because she does. She does.). But, in reality, she knows her sister is right. Pam with all her psychobabble about Daddy issues and low self-esteem and needing to be needed and unhealthy coping mechanisms because Lisa’s riding hard for a fall and – 

But Pam has James, doesn’t she? Perfect fucking James, the one guy who doesn’t leave when guys always fucking leave, and perfect fucking Pamela with her fancy-ass college degree and – 

“Sammy ran away,” he says at last. His voice so quiet it’s like he isn’t entirely sure he’s actually speaking. “We got him back, but – Dad was – and it was my fault. I should have kept a better eye on him. So, Dad –”

“He kick you out?” Lisa guesses. 

“No,” he says, too quickly, and he licks his lips, and Lisa can tell he is terrified. Terrified that maybe he has been kicked out. “I just…sent me to go work a job with a couple friends. I’m just…clearing my head.” 

“I’m sorry,” Lisa says. She levers up on her elbow, kisses him on the corner of his mouth, and he turns to look at her in surprise, like maybe he’s not used to people being sorry. “I hope I’m helping. With the clearing your head part, I mean.” 

He fixes a grin back in place. “Don’t worry,” he says. “You definitely are.” 

His fingers start wandering again, distracting her from her line of questioning. His thumb brushes her nipple, almost like he doesn’t know what he’s doing, but Lisa knows men like him, and he knows exactly what he’s doing. 

Lisa swats his hand away, but nestles into his chest to let him know she doesn’t fault him for trying. He settles into the bed with a sigh, draws his arm tighter around her back. His arms are heavy and comforting around her body, and it’s all the warmth she needs as she drifts to sleep. 

Like a good one-night stand, he’s up before she is, pulling on his jeans while she’s blinking the sleep from her eyes. 

“Hell of a night,” he tells her when he sees she’s awake. 

She hums in agreement. “I could make you breakfast,” she offers. She sits up in bed, letting the sheets fall from her bare breasts, because it was a hell of a night and she’s not keen to see the back of his head yet. 

Neither of them are under any delusions about what this is. But it’s the weekend. And Lisa has nothing else to do. And it’s nice, having someone next to you in bed. 

“And coffee,” she adds. “I’m an expert at coffee.” 

“Hmm,” he says, mouth twisting thoughtfully, eyes on her chest and not thinking about breakfast. 

“Well, it’s not like I’ve got anywhere else to be,” he says with a shrug, dropping his flannel back to the floor. 

“And you still haven’t told me what happened to your leg,” she reminds him, beckoning for him to get back into the bed, fishing for the blankets they kicked off sometime during the night. Breakfast can wait. 

“Hunting accident,” he answers her with a grunt that’s almost a laugh, dropping his jeans again, crawling under the covers. Skin touches skin and she’s suddenly covered with gooseflesh. 

“Huh,” she answers, hiding her shiver as he runs a finger up her thigh. “What do you hunt?” She wants to make a quip about _besides lonely girls in bars_ but he’s heading toward serious territory now, wasting little time on perfunctory details, and she bites her lip to stop from moaning. 

“Deer,” he answers. 

She doesn’t have much time to register that it’s a lie; deer season doesn’t start for another two weeks. Besides, she doesn’t care. All she’s currently aware of is where his fingers are and that shit-eating grin that’s spreading his lips, the tantalizing gleam in his eye that tells her he knows exactly how badly she wants him right now. 

Lisa takes a deep breath to steady herself. She grabs his wrist and yanks it away from her crotch. In a smooth motion, she throws her leg over his waist and hoists herself up so she’s straddling him. He’s on his back, blinking at her with a surprised and vaguely impressed look. He should know by now that’s she’s plenty flexible. 

She’s the one smiling now, and his face flushes red as blood rushes to all sorts of interesting places. 

He must have told her his name sometime between the moment he stepped into the bar and now, because, hands spread on his chest, she whispers “Dean” into his neck and takes his earlobe between her teeth. He moans, soft and low, and that’s the only thing that’s important.

**Author's Note:**

> Uhg. The Dean/Lisa storyline makes my heart ache. It’s just…he deserves so much to be happy, and he tries so freaking hard. Anyway, I wanted to give Dean and Lisa some kind of emotional connection for their backstory. Dean’s had so many one-night stands in his life; Lisa needed to be special in a way besides being “bendy” if she could make Dean come back to her, so I placed this soon after Sam runs off to Flagstaff, fitting it into my headcanon that Dean’s “five-day road trip,” he took while Sam and John were in Orlando was actually because John was so pissed at him he sent him off to work a job with a couple other hunters (maybe Walt and Roy, and maybe that’s another story I’ll tell some time), and Dean just happened to be in a particularly emotionally vulnerable position when he met Lisa, so she stuck in his head.
> 
> Find me on Tumblr where I psychoanalyze the boys, dissect incredibly minute details about the show, post bits and pieces about my fic, and look for friends: [foolondahill17](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/foolondahill17)


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